On March 17 and 18, approximately 35 students boarded a bus headed to Flagstaff.

NJROTC took a field trip to NAU’s, Naval Observatory, Lowell Observatory, and the meteor crater which is located 35 miles east of flagstaff.

“This field trip was a fantastic experience and good history for the students especially the meteor crater that happened 50,000 years ago,” NJROTC instructors Commander Pat Mclain and Chief Paul Barnett said.

 The students had a close up experience with the telescopes that discovered Pluto at the Lowell observatory and see how it works as well as learn interesting facts about the telescope.

“This is our first year taking this field trip, it was actually a part of our astronomy class and only the top 3^rd of the class scores were able to go,” Mclain and Barnett stated.

NJROTC will be taking this trip again in four years for students who remain in the NJROTC program; they will be able to go on this field trip.

Student’s like Sophomore Christine Ellis and Freshman Crystal Ottoway had a wonderful time on the field trip.

“I learned a lot more than I thought I would before we went on the field trip, the Lowell observatory was really easy to understand because they didn’t make it hard for us to understand what they were talking about and they explained many things to us, they also had examples that we were able to hold and touch and understand better,” Ellis stated.

 The most interesting thing Ellis learned on the field trip is that our galaxy is an active black hole but not to worry because we won’t be affected in our time lifetime.

“I learned so much on the field trip,” Ottoway said. ”The Naval Astronomer at the Naval Observatory showed us so much and took us on a tour, he told us about how we can locate ourselves from the universe, we got to see the meteor crater and touch meteorites. We were also able to take a tour of NAU campus to see the Science Culture building.  The Naval observatory new what they were doing with the tour of the telescopes and it was amazing.”

Ottoway says she would definitely work at the Naval Science Center if she ever had the opportunity.